Software

And a good thing, too.

Yesterday, I was talking about how I got lucky with a computer crash and how that luck was based on preparation. So, today, I thought I’d tell you a little bit about what those preparations were—and are.

First, hang on to all installation disks. If you download a program from the internet, copy the installation file to a CD or a DVD. And don’t forget the operating system. My laptop has a built-in system recovery feature. A portion of the hard drive is set aside to store the installation files. That wasn’t anything I did. That’s how it came. It’s not my preferred method, though, because who is to say the drive itself won’t crash. Often, a disabled hard drive can be resuscitated by a complete reformat. At that point, you’d need the installation disks. In my case, there are no disks for the operating system. I won’t make that mistake with any future purchase. A recovery partition is great. I won’t turn it down. But I want the installation disks for the operating system, too.

Second, backup all your data. All your word processing documents, all your videos, all your photos, all your databases, spreadsheets, everything. Back it up twice. Keep one backup offsite, if possible. Sure, a set in your desk drawer is great if your hard drive crashes. What if your house burns down?

I used to leave a backup at my mom’s house. Hard drives got bigger, and it became impractical, both in terms of time spent and DVDs used. Now, I use Carbonite. For a low yearly fee, Carbonite backs up a single local hard drive to their remote servers. If you change a file, a new version gets backed up. It happens in the background. After the initial backup, it happens quickly, quietly and without slowing down your computer. I highly recommend it. (Just remember it’s not an archive service. What Carbonite is doing is synchronizing your hard drive with files on their server. If you delete something, they will too—after a specified period, of course, because what good’s a backup if you can’t restore things you’ve accidentally erased?)

I also use Second Copy. It works in much the same way as Carbonite, except that it’s making a local copy—to an internal or external drive or to another PC on your network. There’s no yearly fee. You buy the software, install it, and that’s it (unless you decide to upgrade to a newer version at some point). I use it to synchronize the files on my laptop with those on my desktop machine as well as to make a backup to an external USB drive.

At any given moment, I’ve got three copies of my data in my office and one in the cloud. Could I still lose it all? Sure. But, at that point, I think we’re all gonna have bigger problems.

My point—and my tip for this Tuesday—is that bits and bytes are fragile. Do you know where your backups are?

You don’t need money to toot your own horn. You just need a horn.
—from a Citibank ad, of all things

A playwright is always his or her own first producer.

That’s an inconvenient truth.

It also applies to almost any kind of artist.

I’m extremely sorry to have to tell you this, but the chances of somebody knocking on your door to offer you a recording contract when they hear you singing in the shower are slim.

Your private journal, however steeped in literary eloquence, isn’t going to bring you a publisher if no one ever sees it.

You’ve got to get over all that early training about only speaking when you’re spoken to and acting like a lady and being modest and so forth.

Put your stuff out there.

Marketing is key. And it’s not just for Fortune 500 companies any longer.

These days, we all have access to a relatively inexpensive marketing tool that levels the playing field. It is easy–and important–to have your own website.

A lot of web hosts provide powerful tools to get you up and running quickly. In order to put your own stamp on your design, however, I highly recommend that you achieve a basic understanding of HTML (main markup language for web pages). Even if you use any or all of the various WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editors that allow for drag-and-drop design and which have come a long way since the early days, understanding the underlying codes is invaluable when there’s a problem.

Being able to edit the HTML can save you hours of confusion and frustration.

And this Tuesday’s Tip is a pointer to a great online tutorial, W3Schools, and a reminder about a nifty little program that makes editing that code much easier: Notepad++.

W3Schools is a terrific reference to all the major web design languages. It has great interactive online tutorials and lots of examples for beginners and a searchable reference for more knowledgeable users. I use it all the time.

And once W3Schools has helped me figure out what the code should look like on my webpage, I go to Notepad++ to help me implement the solution.

It’s possible to edit HTML in the regular old Notepad that comes with Windows. Notepad++, however–free to download and use–provides a number of additional features that will make you wonder how you ever survived without them.

It lets you edit multiple documents in the same window. Great for cutting and pasting useful bits of code from one page to another.
It allows color coding of syntax. Comments in one color, keywords in another, etc. So much easier to read the code that way.
It allows collapsing and expanding of sections of code. Just make the whole table disappear (in the code), while you work on the rest of the page, for example.
It allows search and replace across multiple documents. If you change the directory structure of your website, you can globally replace all references to any particular path.

There are other features I haven’t yet explored, but those alone have saved me hours of time.

We’d all like to spend all our time on creative endeavors. But if we want those endeavors noticed, we might have to toot our own horns.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants

Tag Archives: Software

That’s redundant

Tooting your own horn